No Tbo Touch, you can't just think your way to radical transformation

I started school in 1977, aged five, when the minister of Bantu education was one Michiel Coenraad Botha. His job was to ensure that I acquired just enough education to be able to read the Blankes Alleenlik signs on the Durban beachfront.

There were about 120 of us in one class until Miss Allie and Ma'am Ndlovu introduced a shift system. Half the class started school at 8am and the other half around noon. I wish I was making this up.

I have to report that the Honourable Minister Botha succeeded in his mission. It would surprise me if, out of those 120, more than 20 got to matric or went on to participate fully in the delusion we used to refer to as The Rainbow Nation.

Many of them ended up plucking chickens in the local Rainbow Chickens factory. A fair percentage disappeared into the vortex of the political wars of the 1980s.

I recently stopped to buy snacks at the BP garage on Hammarsdale's main road and the woman behind the till sheepishly told me that she and I had been together in Grade 1. She had been one the sharpest kids in my class.

I thought about this during a recent installment of Kaya FM's afternoon show, Uncaptured, which I co-host with Kgomotso Matsunyane.

The previous evening, radio jock Tbo Touch had tweeted: "The only difference between the guy I just drove pass [sic] begging in [the] streets and myself is our mental disposition. Let's change how we think."

Black Twitter descended upon him like seagulls on a sardine run. They were incensed by the notion that the only thing standing in the way of the thousands of beggars on every street corner acquiring Rolls Royces was an adjustment in mental disposition.

Someone at Kaya FM thought it would be a swell idea to call Tbo Touch to explain; 30 seconds into the interview, it became obvious the motivational guru was totally unrepentant.

When I tried to interject for a clarification, the sage waved me off with "let me educate you" in a decidedly Ebonics twang.

I'm happy to report that I have been duly educated. Since that interaction, I have embraced the indisputable truth: the only difference between me and the 100 poor sods who were with me in Grade 1 but didn't make it out of our childhood hellhole is our respective mental dispositions.

And believe me when I tell you that our neighbourhood was a hellhole. I'm talking about people who, to this day, leave their hovels in Cato Manor, Orange Farm or Nyanga every day at 3.30am to catch trains and taxis that will get them to the suburbs by 7am.

And what do they get for their troubles? The "dignity of an honest day's labour".

Yes, the dignity of cleaning up the aftermath of the morning Otees and Cheerios wars "we" complain about on Facebook and Instagram after we log in to the free Wi-Fi at the office at 8.15am. The dignity of soaking 12-year-olds' rugby shorts.

By "we"', I mean those of us who had the foresight to adopt the correct "mental disposition" to slip through Coenraad Botha's clutches.

And that excludes those folks with weak minds and fickle willpower who "decided" that cleaning up vomit-stained carpets after cocktail parties was not for them and opted for begging at street corners, eliciting the wrath of radio jocks in the process.

This is why I have decided to stop swimming upstream like a salmon. Very soon, I will start my own "mental disposition" and "mindset" coaching seminars. I will charge R199.95 for my inspirational book full of gems.

By the time I'm done changing mindsets, the Joburg inner city will be totally devoid of beggars and other undesirables. My Advanced Programme - now just R39,995.95
for a limited time only - will turn an ordinary corporate employee into a mogul who runs a JSE-listed company.

Change your thinking.